Hellgate: London Peek #2

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Bill Roper returns to talk about the story element in Flagship Studios' game plus the setting in which it takes place

By IGN Staff

Exceptionally organized and hierarchical, Templars are unwavering in their mission to destroy evil. They retain and venerate customs and rituals passed down through the centuries, and just like their predecessors long ago who foresaw a massive demonic invasion, have trained diligently in martial disciplines and holy magic to prepare for the inevitable conflict. Cabalists study the dark arts and combine them with knowledge from the peripheries of science, seeking to use the fiends' own powers against them. They are spellcasters who summon and control the terrifying creatures and forces of the netherworld. In doing so, they frequently risk corrupting themselves.

Hunters put their faith in the most advanced weaponry they can acquire. Most are former members of elite military units and clandestine agencies; in these roles, they were accustomed to stalking extremely deadly prey, including each other. In Flagship Studios' Hellgate: London, which takes place in 2038, the titular city lies in ruins, shattered by a demon army against which nuclear and even biological armaments were almost completely ineffective. There is but one final, desperate ray of hope. It resides with factions such as these, who can face the monsters with abilities and technologies outside the realm of normal understanding.

Story and Setting

Let me start off by quoting our Writer's Bible since it sums up how we got to where we are so nicely.

London, 2020

According to legend, when the ravens depart the Tower of London, it will crumble to rubble and disaster will befall England. As man became more dependent on science, believing only in what he could define or create, ancient knowledge and rituals were lost to the antiquity of time. Prophecies that had stood as warnings for untold generations were seen as archaic folly or ignorant superstition; so, when the harbingers of evil began to manifest, few saw and fewer believed.

We then have a massive amount of diversity within the types of environments, rarity of levels, and special events that only happen within certain ones at certain times.

When the Demons finally came, there was little that stood in their way.

Pouring from the immense, roiling chaos of the Hellgates and rifts that had opened in numerous locales, the Demons quickly and systematically overwhelmed all of humanity's defenses. Even the nuclear and biological weaponry employed by a few desperate nations did little more than slow the apocalypse. The nature of the Demons' attack presented little in the way of strategic military targets to the Generals of mankind's armies. The usual tactics of war were useless.

A rebellious few who still practiced the holy, ancient, and arcane rites stood proudly against the Dark invaders, using weapons and spells forged in the traditions of their forebears. Their successes were scattered, and the leaders of the great military forces could neither understand nor accept their strange ways. This mystical resistance drew the immediate attention of the immensely powerful creatures, seemingly immune to the ordinary weapons of mankind. Soon, those who had preserved the knowledge of how to combat such Demons shifted their focus from simply driving them back into the twisting nether toward saving as many of their fellow humans as they could. They retreated to the relative sanctuary of the London Underground, a haven whose construction they had orchestrated decades before.

A generation has passed, and the once-great city of London now lies in ruin. A massive, sinister gash in the fabric of our reality gnarls and churns, dominating the horizon near the Hellgate as it blends into a permanently darkened sky. The Invasion, the unspeakable cataclysm that befell London, eventually engulfed all humanity. The powerful nations of man were eradicated, and the decades-long process called The Burn - the alteration and assimilation of our world into theirs - had begun.

Regardless, mankind is a race of survivors. Men and women hide in the shadows of their former dominance, struggling to survive, yearning to strike back at their conquerors. These survivors have banded together, and they are learning.

Learning how to travel undetected.

Learning how to forge weapons capable of piercing unfathomable defenses.

Learning how to harness the forgotten and arcane powers of magic.

Learning how to kill Demons and close the Hellgate...

The main objective of the storyline is to find some way to shut the Hellgate and stem the tide of Demons that have invaded our world. There are mysteries to uncover, ancient rites to unlock and a whole host of vile denizens of the underworld standing in your way. The game takes you through the storyline in a mainly linear fashion, directing you towards ever-increasingly difficult and exciting areas and enemies. Within this storyline is the opportunity to do a lot of non-linear exploring and advancing - whether through shorter directed moments like missions or chance events or just by going out and killing for experience and treasures.

The game is set in a post-demon apocalypse London. Humanity has been driven to seek sanctuary in the Underground, and the action takes place both in the streets above and the labyrinth of locations below. The gameplay is all instanced - much more along the lines of Diablo II or Guild Wars - and since it is randomly generated, the size of the world is an incredibly difficult thing to quantify.

Our environments range from Underground Stations (both safe and dangerous), city streets, alleyways, maintenance rooms, parks, the tube system, sewers, the dried out riverbed of the Thames, to landmark locations such as Covent Garden Market and the British Museum and MANY more.

We then have a massive amount of diversity within the types of environments, rarity of levels, and special events that only happen within certain ones at certain times. This makes the gameworld extremely large in the sense of how different it can be every time you play. It isn't large in the sense of how long it takes to get from one end to the other since, well, we think that's honestly not a very compelling way to look at it from a gameplay stance.